Anchorage police chief: Bodycam footage of Handy’s fatal shooting likely public ‘within the next week’

Anchorage Police Chief Sean Case on Friday said that officer body-worn camera footage from the fatal police shooting of Kristopher Handy will be publicly released soon — likely within the next week, after Handy’s family views it.

Anchorage police officers began wearing body cameras in March. A recent string of five police shootings, which began May 13 with Handy’s killing, were the first to be captured by body cameras. Officers have killed three people and wounded two over the last three months. No footage has been released so far.

Case said the department is actively working to produce videos of the other shootings. Footage of incidents that do not involve a criminal investigation or charges against a suspect will likely be released “in the subsequent weeks,” he said in a Friday interview.

Last week, Case proposed draft policy changes for how and when the police department releases such footage. The policy calls for bodycam footage of officer shootings to be released within 45 days and for families to be able to view it after 14 days. However, the chief could withhold footage from the public for longer to protect the integrity of an investigation, people or confidential sources involved, or the rights of those accused of any crimes.

Case took over leadership of the department July 1 after his appointment by then-incoming Mayor Suzanne LaFrance, and was confirmed as chief by the Assembly in a vote earlier this week.

Because the new policy doesn’t retroactively apply to Handy’s shooting, “we’re trying to work a time with the family so they can view it and they can have time to process the video,” Case said. “We’re allowing that to delay the public release, whereas in future cases, that’s going to be moved up much earlier in the process and won’t impact the (public) release.”

Surveillance footage from an apartment near Handy’s in West Anchorage has raised questions about the department’s description of the incident, and public pressure on police to release footage has mounted.

Case and Municipal Attorney Eva Gardner met with the Anchorage Assembly on Friday to discuss the draft body-worn camera policy changes, which go into effect Monday.

The former policy, which was put in place by the department last August, left the decision to release footage up to the police chief’s discretion, Case told Assembly members. It raised numerous unanswered questions for the public about the decision-making process, and whether the department would release footage, he said.

“As of today, no chief of police has taken advantage of that,” Case said. “So obviously, it’s a statement in the policy that the public presume — which, accurately so, at this point in time — we probably are never going to take advantage of the chief’s discretion in the policy.”

The new policy is designed to give the public a realistic expectation of when people can see body-worn camera footage, he added.

Case said he used the Los Angeles Police Department’s video release policy as a model. It has a 45-day timeframe for public release.

A police shooting triggers a criminal investigation into the conduct of the officers by the state Office of Special Prosecutions, and sometimes a criminal investigation by the department into a surviving suspect. The department may also conduct an administrative investigation that can result in disciplinary action for officers.

The timeframe should allow for the department to get the necessary statements from the officers, he said.

“The top priority, as the chief with this policy, is to make sure, before we release video to the public, that we have a documented statement from the officers involved in the incident prior to their viewing of the body-worn camera footage,” he said.

Gardner told Assembly members that the department is trying to balance accountability to the public, protecting privacy of witnesses, the investigation and due process rights, and sensitivity to the families.

“It would be really difficult to balance all of those responsibilities in a week or 10 days,” she said.

Instead, it’s a realistic timeframe that allows witnesses to be identified, notified, their statements collected and their faces blurred in footage and time for the department to review a “potentially huge, voluminous amount of footage,” Gardner said.

Case has called the 45-day timeframe “a starting point,” and at Friday’s meeting, he reiterated that he’d like to see the timeframe reduced in the future.

Releasing footage from incidents in which a person is charged with a crime could take significantly longer.

But “I don’t think there’s a scenario where it never gets released,” Case said in the interview.

For example, the June 1 police shooting of Kaleb Bourdukofsky behind the Pioneer Bar in downtown Anchorage involves a homicide investigation, Case said. Bourdukofsky, who survived and was hospitalized, has been charged with murder. An investigation by the state Office of Special Prosecutions determined the officers were justified in their use of force.

Releasing evidence “predisposes the public toward one way or another,” making it difficult to find a full jury of peers, especially smaller communities, Gardner told Assembly members. She added, “Anchorage is still a pretty small community compared to somewhere like L.A.”

Questions about editing footage

In recent weeks, several Assembly members have pushed for faster release of the footage. On Tuesday, the Assembly approved a resolution urging the police department to immediately provide copies of the footage to the Handy family and to publicly release footage of all the recent shootings within 30 days.

The resolution also asked the police department to include in the policy the creation of a public group that would determine whether to release footage in the event that APD doesn’t release it “at the first opportunity available under the policy.” Some Anchorage residents and groups have also called for the city to establish an independent public review board.

On Friday, Assembly members raised some questions and concerns about the policy, but they did not press Case about releasing all recent footage within 30 days, nor did they question him about creating a public review group.

In an interview, Case said he plans to address only the suggestions members made during the meeting in order to get the policy online quickly.

“It’s not going to shock me if that issue comes up in the coming weeks or year, and we’ll certainly address that as it comes up,” he said of the call for a public review group.

On Friday, the Assembly questioned Case about how the footage would be edited and collated for public viewing. The draft policy states that it may not show “all the shots fired or moments immediately following shots fired.”

Assembly member Kameron Perez-Verdia said the public has raised concerns about the editing process, and how it will know whether public footage gives an accurate representation.

“There may be an administration — that’s not your administration — that we’re concerned that there are choices being made in that production and in that redaction that are trying to not necessarily share the whole story,” Perez-Verdia said, adding that the city should consider having some sort of “internal control,” like how it audits its finances.

Final footage will be a “start-to-finish production of what the incident is like,” that shows the information and context the police department had going into the situation, such as the information dispatch received and what dispatch gave to the officers, according to Case.

The individual camera footage won’t be modified; rather, the department will piece together the various audio and video angles so the public can see and hear it from multiple perspectives that show a cohesive story, he said.

“The goal is to show the most clear and accurate picture of what happened,” Case said.

Member Felix Rivera asked whether the department would provide a redaction log for each video that describes what information is removed and why.

“I’m not sure I want to commit to every single redaction” because there are “a lot,” Case said in the response.

The department can instead create a general redaction summary applicable to all videos that explains why faces, license plates or other information is removed, he said. Most redactions will be “relatively obvious” and most are legally required in order to protect personal information, he said.

A ‘bottleneck’

Several Assembly members also expressed frustration about a “bottleneck” with the state Office of Special Prosecutions reviews delaying footage release.

The city’s hope is that the 45-day policy will “operate as a deadline for (OSP) to complete their investigations,” Gardner said.

“Of course, we have no control over OSP. But I think the public attention on this and the advocacy on this issue has really lit a fire under them,” Gardner said.

During a news conference on Wednesday, the state office “publicly expressed a commitment to speeding things up,” she said.

The Office of Special Prosecutions is working to speed up the state agencies involved — like the lab for ballistics and toxicology reports, and the medical examiner for autopsies — that often contribute to delays, according to John Skidmore, deputy attorney general for the state Department of Law’s Criminal Division, who spoke at the Wednesday news conference.

The office received the ballistics and medical examiner’s report in the Handy case on Tuesday, he said, adding that it will likely take “a couple of weeks to finish that review.”

Skidmore also said he’s doubled the number of prosecutors handling the cases, increasing that staff from three to seven.

Daily News reporter Zachariah Hughes contributed to this report.